Spinning

I said in my last post that I’d post about the spinning day, so here we go!

I had a grand day out on Saturday – as previously mentioned a friend and I (and nine other ladies) had a ‘Spinning with a Drop Spindle’ workshop with Alison from yarnscape. Like all speakers for our branch of the Embroiderers Guild, poor Alison had to do a talk on the Friday night AND a workshop all day on Saturday. We work ’em hard! She turned out to be a fascinating and engaging speaker though, and an excellent tutor.

I discovered the whole concept of archao-linguistics at her talk – something I want to find out more about … if I ever have time. Absolutely fascinating. You can trace a technology such as glass-making or weaving around the world, seeing when it was adopted into different cultures etc., because as it’s adopted, a culture wouldn’t have a word for it so would tend to use the word of the culture or person introducing it to them… so you trace the words and the rest follows from there. Cool!

We all had a great (if frustrating) time at the workshop on Saturday. I think learning spinning is inherently frustrating – there were an awful lot of ‘aaaah’s and ‘urrghs’ early on in the day, even though Alison very wisely started us of gently with plying and unplying ready-made yarns and only moved on to fibres later. I think I know why it’s called a ‘drop spindle now – not because you let it dangle as you spin; rather because the dratted thing keeps dropping! Fortunately the groans were followed by more and more happy noises as people finally found they’d got the hang of it … or in my case ALMOST got the hang of it!

I was quite concerned, given the very changeable but fundamentally damp weather we were having, that my RA would play up and make holding the spindle and yarn and fibre (in hands, knees, mouth and any other available appendage!) Thankfully it didn’t, and neither did my friend’s – she’s the one I’ve mentioned before who also has RA but who I actually met on at a quilting group. However, Alison says we need to practice ten minutes a day if we’re ever going to master this (or words to that effect) and my hands are playing up a bit today, so it’ll be interesting to see if it makes things worse or doesn’t make any difference. One good thing is that the spindle itself (this particular one that Alison provided anyway) is very light, and one of the things we spun was silk, which is of course incredibly light, but even a handful or so of wool isn’t exactly back breaking, so I think it might be fine.

I’m sure if things were REALLY swollen it would be completely hopeless but luckily I tend not to get really swollen; just a bit on the achy side now and then … or in fact now! Off to see what effect spinning has … I hope none!

Yup, twenty minutes of spinning, one dropped spindle and two broken threads (over twisting!) later, I can safely say it’s not hurting! In fact I feel slightly better for it!

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Good for you…. i wish you luck… that’s something i know for sure would get me frustrated…i knit,crochet and quilt constantly and hands seem to be “hanging in there”…
Right now my Doc says things are great… more “other stuff” to bug me, but it’s summer and the pool is open, so all is right with the world!!!!
Stay well friend… hugs B

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My name is not Pollyanna and I'm not a penguin. If you'd not worked out the last bit you should probably stop reading this and seek out a psychologist.

This is a blog about me and rheumatoid arthritis - sounds like fun, huh? Well I'm hoping it'll be a bit more fun than it sounds - hence the Pollyanna part. I'm going to try to stay positive about it and play 'Pollyanna's glad game' - finding reasons to be cheerful basically.

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